Greenbelt favourite Iain returns to the Festival to play a special show with some of his friends. And he's very well connected! He's co-written an Ivor Novello award-winning hit in his time as an honorary member of Snow Patrol, but Iain Archer is not one to rest on his laurels. As a solo artist of great depth and resonance, with a touch of the Mike Scott about him, Archer continues to reinvent the singer-songwriter genre. Mojo's assessment is 'evocative, windswept, romantic' and Uncut magazine calls his music 'unassuming, but gripping'. Prepare to be gripped. Archer grew up in a Northern Irish backwater in what he calls a 'tight religious community'. Finding the insularity oppressive, he moved to Glasgow to find liberation and a deal with Sticky Records in the mid-90s. His work was well received and won him support slots with John Martyn and Nils Lofgren, but Iain was afraid of the temptation to write 'decorative' music and effectively quit music for four years to work with homeless young people. Coaxed back into the music business, he hooked up with Snow Patrol during which time he co-wrote the award-winning Run, which appears on their 2003 album Final Straw. His struggle against churning out unchallenging pop continued, and the result was the 2005 solo album Flood The Tanks. 'I wanted the whole thing to be broken. That was the most important thing about that album, that it had a sense of falling apart, and fragility'. Follow up work, Magnetic North, showcase a confident, spiky pop edge. Iain describes the album as a kind of return, a reconciliation. 'I can't handle using religious terms, because I was so steeped in them...[but] I think it's about redemption, to be honest.' Iain releases his latest album To The Pine Roots at Greenbelt 2008. In a word: 4real